A strongman broke the world's most hair-raising record this morning when he
pulled a double decker bus more than 20 metres – using only his hair.

Manjit Singh, a 59-year-old from Leicester, attached a clamp to his thick ponytail and bore the pain of pulling a seven ton vintage routemaster 21.2 metres through Battersea Park to set a new world record and celebrate Guinness World Record day.

After the event he said: "It was painful, but it was worth it. I could only think about my legs and head and keeping on going to set a record, to go as far as I could."

He said that there was no training he could do to prepare for the event and he had no special regime for his unbreakable hair. "I just use shampoo, like the kind you can get in any pound shop up and down the country," he laughed.

The motivation to attempt the bizarre record came from his failure to pull a similar bus attached only to his ears two years ago. The father of four said: "My children think it's great, they think I'm a real star now."

The bus pull was just one of the records attempted around the world to celebrate Guinness World Records day. In London people attempted the world's biggest group hug, in Northern Ireland people attempted the world's biggest human domino fall and in Texas people attempted the world's biggest simultaneous lassoing.